About MarkJFine

@maratsade Read the Dune trilogy (Third book was real hard to get past because it was so dark), but did not read "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?". Conisdered getting the graphic novel series tho. ... View more

Love Blade Runner. So many classic lines and a classic cast.   Edit: Many people think David Lynch ruined Dune... I feel the same about BR as I do Dune... awesome cast, and quite a few memorable lines. ... View more

People that just have to have a moan (or in this case a diatribe) anywhere they feel like it... it's getting old. A wise person once said there's a time and place for everything, and it don't belong here, anytime. ... View more

@GabeU I haven't been on 66 during rush hour (or anything close to rush hour) since Dec 2013. Dont miss it. Avoid at all costs.   And yes. If Disney built a park in Haymarket there it would have been a disaster. Glad it was voted down. ... View more

@GabeU Yup. I got here right in the middle of the DC boom in the Reagan years. Manassas was just building up and Gainesville was nothing more than a factory and an auto parts dump site. Wife actually cried as we drove past Gainesville saying, "you're bringing me where?". You should see it now. ... View more

This was an Ansanor A1417 replacement. $62 on Amazon. It charged, discharged and fully re-charged just fine. So I opened it back up, took the tape covers off (also the extra clear tape across the front - don't want that heating up), and made it permanent today. ... View more

@maratsade Yes. Lithium batteries are like explosive weapons when not taken care of properly. In fact, one of the reasons why I live in Virginia is because Lithium batteries weren't allowed on aircraft in the mid 80's. I was bringing several military radio systems down here from NJ for testing. I Looked around, noticed the cost of living (including house prices) was like 1/3 to 1/5 of what it was in Monmouth County. Went home and told my wife we were moving. Been here since '87. #TrueStory ... View more

Actually, what they recommend is a thread soaked in rubbing alcohol. It supposedly breaks down the adhesive cleanly, but that still sounds a bit messy to me. I recently bought a Tekton kit off of Amazon that's a tinkerer's dream. Not only has the PL1.2 and T4 bits needed to uncork all the screws, but has a magnetic mat to keep them in one place when you've taken them out (and geometrically positioned to where you got them from - I like screws to go back exactly where they came from). But it also came with these two. Came in real handy here. ... View more

I saw R7000 and immediately thought "ICOM" ... View more

@GabeU I keep forgetting that, so I've amended the original FAQ. ... View more

FAQ: Under some circumstances, the configuration and cached information that the Usage Meter needs to operate gets corrupted. In the event that this happens: 1. Fully quit the Usage Meter from it's own menu by clicking on the donut in the menubar and clicking "Quit". 2. Look for the following directory    Windows: C:\Users\[your User name]\AppData\Roaming\    Mac: /Users/[your User name]/Library/Application Support/ 3. Carefully delete just the "HughesNet Usage Meter" directory under that and empty the trash. 4. Restart the Usage Meter. This will regenerate all the underlying information as if it were run for the first time, thus correcting the error. Disregard other recommendations that say to uninstall and reinstall the app and/or update Java as those do absolutely nothing to fix the problem. Uninstalling doesn't delete the directories above. Likewise, the application is written in JavaScript which is completely separate from Java, which of itself is a stand-alone runtime environment. The only reason you should possibly uninstall something is if you are not running the current version, have inadvertently deleted part of the application, or have the older "HughesNet Status Meter" still installed. Uninstalling the older Status Meter and using the most recent version of Usage Meter is highly recommended. ... View more

@maratsadewrote: That looks good, Mark! Oh it was awesome. Not sure what I did different yesterday, but it came out just like it should: Very firm but light and fluffy. Maybe I was just hungrier than usual, but it was just like an egg veggie pizza. ... View more

Best one yet... 6 large eggs (w/ground black pepper, few swigs of almond milk, and 1/4 cup of feta), 5 sliced cherry tomatoes, 10 sliced black olives, 8 sliced green olives (w/pimientos) chopped slice of red onion, 6 chopped slivers of green pepper, 1/4 cup of leftover spinach, topped with cheddar while it finished under the broiler. And yes, if I had shrooms they would be in there too (ran out). ... View more

I've noticed that I've been literally burning through data lately again, similar to what I noticed about a year ago, where data usage seems to be twice as much as what you think you're using, or more.   Either it's a change in the compression scheme, something causing packet resends between here and the gateway, or a couple of other paranoid theories I've had for a while that might explain some external phantom usage:   Basically it has to do with bittorrent like protocols, where someone from the network might be excessively pinging your public IP, forcing data usage. If someone else using the IP 'shared' files it's very possible that other(s) have that IP stored from a recent session and are trying to reconnect. Might be your bad luck that you were assigned that IP. Forcing a new dynamic IP assignment from a reboot should alleviate something like that, but hasn't really for the most part.   Similarly, it could also be people probing known HN IP ranges with unblocked ports. Noticed this happens when spam levels tend to rise - basically unscrupulous people looking for ways to hack into unprotected servers to implant spam bots. Spam levels have been up and down erratic for a while now. I prefer to blame one of the sketchy iOS games my wife plays on her phone (Cascade?), although I think that's not really it. ... View more

It's an offshoot of the people who know (over the phone, no less) that you have a virus and only they can fix your registry. Same class of people threatening they're with the IRS. In fact, I think they all use the same CallerID spoofing software, the latest of which is now picking numbers from a database with your area code and local exchange. ... View more

Seemed like a real nice guy. It's a shame he suffered. That's a real bad way to go. ... View more

Thanks guys. This is going to sound really bad, but it's a very bizarre situation. I'd write a book but no one would believe it. ... View more

Thanks. Been (and still am) dealing with a death in the family since end of Feb. Lots of running around. ... View more

Some of us will remember the triple-blizzard winter we had here in the DC area a couple of years back. Three deep snows in as many weeks, iirc. I hand-shoveled my 250' driveway wearing a heartrate monitor so I could measure calorie burn. ... View more

Beware those efficient spirally-shaped non-LED bulbs. They really make a mess of 40 meters. ... View more

Real nice pics.   Was up in Central NJ most of last week on less than pleasant business. Friday was no fun with high winds and wet snows going sideways. Spent a good part of the day driving around doing errands in it.   Meanwhile, back here in Virginia there was reports of high winds, downed trees, and mass power outages. Expected the worst when I got home, but was real lucky: No downed trees at all, not even the scary dead hickory that looks like it could squash a whole lot of things (think it's time to get that beast taken care of, professionally tho).   Also, judging from the times that phone messages were left it appeared as if we hadn't lost power either, if for only a blip - all the DTV boxes were on, but no appliance clocks were blinking. So there's that. ... View more

Fridays are usually scrambled egg night, but not tonight.   Tonight I sauteed sliced grape tomotoes, black olives, chopped green pepper and red onion as usual... but added some feta, crushed black pepper and almond milk, and whisked up a frittata instead.   #WasntHard   Edit: It did need sliced shrooms, but what can you do. ... View more

@Gwalk900 wrote: Don't even get me going on the self proclaimed  "Sys  Admins". I used to employ quite a few SysAds and was going to have some fun with that guy. They were always at odds with software engineers no matter how much of a symbiotic relationship you tried to create. So I really got a chuckle at this. ... View more

@maratsade That's part of it.   One thing I found out a while back was that anger makes people do things they normally wouldn't do. It puts people into positions that are out of character and make decisions that are clouded and personal. It's like the whole premise of how evil attempts to prevail in Star Wars, but nobody gets it.   Social media doesn't help in this regard, because it just makes it easier to unload enmasse. People now think it's normal and acceptable when it really isn't healthy at all. Today, everyone thinks they're Howard Beale. Social media's their drug, and Paddy Chayefsky's rolling in his grave. ... View more

Honestly, I see a couple of cateogries: 1. People who just want to type something, anywhere. They claim they've read though the solutions, but haven't, otherwise they'd see we give basically the same advice over and over. That gets a little cumbersome. Why I started showing people where the search bar was. 2. People who don't really want help, they just want to vent and because they're angry. I actually get this, because I remember a time when I was under a lot of pressure and wasn't too pleasant either. Eventually came around tho. Retirement helped me not take too much too serious. lol   I'll pass up most of these unless I see someone being totally obnoxious or abusing someone else. I've also learned to pass up on speed complaints - those are just are just a moon door to **bleep**.   Edit: gotta love the bleeps. ... View more